Tangled
by Shakuhachi Jade
Summary: Everyone else could see that Bakura and Yami were two very different individuals that did not mesh together at all, that they were a fling and nothing more…everyone except them, of course. YYxYB. Darkshipping. Shonen-ai. Request from rei-jikitsune21.
1. One Thing Wrapped Around Another

**Drabble Challenge from rei-jikitsune21 to help me get over my writer's block:**

_Write any format (drabble, one-shot...pick your posion, lol) based on this "One thing wrapped around another", "Something soft and fluffy", or "A race"._

**THIS will likely be a connecting three-shot, with a small story line based on each respective title. This first one contains one-sided-Puzzleshipping, implied-Tendershipping, and implied-Darkshipping. The story as a whole will eventually be Darkshipping. It will also contain copious amounts of shonen-ai.**

**PLEASE keep in mind that these **_**are**_** drabbles, and as such they are practically un-revised, hardly plot-driven, and come into being spontaneously from the inner-workings of my mind (and as a result, they may not be very good, at least compared to my other works anyway…) In spite of all that, I hope you enjoy the randomness regardless. I sure as hell enjoy writing it~!**

~;~

**Tangled**

**Part 1:****  
><strong>_**One Thing Wrapped Around Another**_

~;~

"Why doesn't he like me anymore?" Yami asked, his head held dejectedly in his hands with his elbows propped up on the kitchen table.

"Easy; you always win, and he doesn't. It's that simple," Yugi replied half-heartedly. "And it doesn't matter if you two are having an argument or a duel monsters battle – you always, _always_ win." He was presently fixing a delicious smelling rice dinner for when his grandfather returned home from work. It was the least he could do on the weekends when he had plenty of free time outside of school.

"I don't know what I did wrong though… The only rule I've ever had is to be myself, aibou. I can't change that…"

"And no one is asking you to, either. Honestly I don't see what you see in him. He's a liar, and a thief, and a complete sadistic scumbag. You should just let him go, especially if it's making you second guess yourself."

"I know I should… I really should, but there's something…I don't know, something _destined_ about us. Like we were meant to be together."

Yugi looked up slowly and paused from fixing their dinner. He asked very carefully, "You mean like the way _we_ were destined?"

"Sort of like that, yes..." Yami, being the very attentive person that he was, also cautiously asked, "Yugi…is there something you're not telling me?"

Yugi immediately went back to stirring the rice. "Oh, no… I'm just thinking out loud is all. Just making conversation."

Yami went on though: "Because it sounds to me like you're trying to distract me from something."

"You could just find anything I tried to distract you from in my memories anyway, Yami. Don't get mad at me, jeez…"

A short pause…

"So what aren't you telling me?" He sounded so depressed… Yugi pondered for a moment whether keeping the truth from him was the right thing to do after all. He probably deserved to know so he could move on, really… Telling him would mean breaking a promise, but he couldn't stand to see his best friend so down anymore. It'd been two weeks; enough was enough.

"You're too perceptive, you know that? Some things aren't worth the pain of knowing…" Yugi bit his lip and tried to focus completely on the food preparation, but he was too deep into the conversation now. He took the pot off of the stove to let it simmer for a bit and turned to face Yami. His partner had the expression of a ghost.

"Tell me," was all he said through the haze. He'd probably already guessed.

"Bakura…is seeing someone else."

Yami schooled his face to be passive and expressionless, but his eyes… Yugi watched his yami's heart break through those purple-red depths. Feelings _that_ strong were nearly impossible to hide completely. He felt it through their bond, besides. It was pitiful.

"Who?" Yami asked, again sounding distant and more than a little shocked.

"Who do you think?" Yugi replied as gently as he could. He'd seen this coming from a mile away. He'd known before anyone else had…

"Ryou?"

"Mhmm."

Silence dampened the kitchen for a while after that, which gave Yugi enough time to finish preparing their dinner. He set out his dishes of cooked rice, sweet carrots, sushi, and grilled chicken on the middle of the table. His grandpa would be home any minute now…

"I should go talk to him."

Yugi sighed. "No, you shouldn't. He's probably with Ryou right now and you'd make him feel bad for trying to be happy for once."

"But why doesn't he want to be with _me_? I made him happy—"

Yugi finally let the agitation seep into his voice. It was bad enough listening to his darker half rant about how great Bakura was all the time, much less hearing him wallow in misery about how terrible and boring life was without him. "Yami, I don't know. I just don't. And I don't see why you care…"

"I love him, Yugi…"

"He doesn't love you." _Not like I do…_

Yugi felt another sharp stab of anguish wash over him through their link. It hurt him to say that, truly – but he was trying to be honest. Everyone else could see that Bakura and Yami were two very different, dominant individuals that did not mesh well together at all. Everyone else knew that their relationship together was a fling and nothing more…

Everyone except them, of course. Well, and Bakura too, he supposed…. If the white-haired devil hadn't known before, he eventually figured it out on his own and decided to move on, for the better in Yugi's opinion. Who wanted to feel constantly insignificant because of who they were with anyway?

Yugi could definitely relate to that; it sucked pretty bad, not being able to be with the one you love… But that was just it, wasn't it? His love was one thing, and Yami was just wrapped around someone else. So much so that Yami was completely blind and lovesick to everything and everyone else around him. It was that way with Yami and Bakura, too – just one thing wrapped around another. _What a sick and tangled web we weave…_ Yugi thought.

"I'm leaving," Yami stated.

"Aren't you going to eat first?" his hikari asked, but his voice sounded too sickly sweet, even to his own ears. Yami gave him a flat look, borderline sarcastic.

"No."

He walked out of the kitchen without another word, and after he'd made it out slammed the door. "Maybe telling him wasn't such a good idea after all…" Yugi mumbled sadly, just as his grandpa swung open the front door again.

"Where's Yami going?" he asked cheerfully, "And what smells so darn good?"

"I made dinner for you and Yami, Gramps. It wasn't to Yami's taste though, so he decided to go out for dinner…"

"He's missing out on something especially wonderful, then." His loving grandfather smiled appreciatively and took a chair at the table with a sigh. It was kinda funny; he didn't realize that he'd just spoken Yugi's exact thoughts aloud, although Yugi wasn't referring to the food in his mind…

He hoped he'd done the right thing by telling him.

~;~

**Thanks for reading!  
>~;~Shaku<strong>


	2. Something Soft and Fluffy

**Drabble Challenge from rei-jikitsune21 to help me get over my writer's block:**

_Write any format (drabble, one-shot...pick your posion, lol) based on this "One thing wrapped around another", "Something soft and fluffy", or "A race"._

**WELCOME to the second installment of my connecting three-shot story! Each drabble will contain a small story line based on each respective title from the challenge. This one contains one-sided-Tendershipping, Darkshipping, and more shonen-ai. **

**SPECIAL THANKS to my first 3 reviewers: **_**rei-jikitsune21, xforeverforgottenx, and Coolaloo.**_** You guys are the reason for such a swift update, and you have no idea how much I appreciate your support.**

**PLEASE keep in mind that these **_**are**_** drabbles, and as such they are practically un-revised, hardly plot-driven, and come into being spontaneously from the inner-workings of my mind (and as a result, they may not be very good, at least compared to my other works anyway…) In spite of all that, I hope you enjoy the randomness regardless. I sure as hell enjoy writing it~!**

~;~

**Tangled**

**Part 2:****  
><strong>_**Something Soft and Fluffy**_

~;~

"Why don't you like me anymore?" Ryou pleaded through the tears drowning his vision. "We've only been together two weeks! How can you possibly want to leave me when we were doing so well?"

Bakura crossed his arms and leaned against the framing of the doorway into the apartment's living room. His face was, as usual, pretty nonchalant and uncaring, but inside he was raging. He closed his eyes in an attempt to ward off feelings of wanting to throttle the boy in front of him for making such a big deal about this. He couldn't tell him the truth; couldn't tell him that he'd only used him to make Yami jealous…it'd kill him.

Maybe not such a bad idea after all, then. To hell with him and everybody else, Yami included. It hadn't worked anyway…

"Ryou, stop it." Bakura tried to sound gentle, but gentle wasn't really in his nature, so it came off as more defensive than compassionate. "I've made up my mind and there's nothing you can do to change it. It's not that I don't like you; you're probably the only other person on this earth besides Yami that can stand to be around me for longer than five minutes… You're my only friend—"

"And we're perfect for each other! Why can't you see that?" Ryou sniffled again, and Bakura actually had to grip his fist to keep from hitting him.

"I've told you what I came here to say, and I refuse to stand here all day just to listen to you bawl like a baby about it. People fall in and out of love like they change their underwear, you little twit. I'm no different. Get over it." With that, he slowly shut the door in Ryou's face and turned to walk down the stairs, away from his newly ex's apartment.

"Tch," he mumbled to himself, "what a shit fest… All I wanted was to make him see that I'm worth more to him than what he makes me out to be. I deserve better than that! Especially from him…" He scuffed his combat boots against the sidewalk and glared at the cracks as they passed under his moving feet. He was clearly not referring to Ryou. "Stupid fucking pharaoh! What do I see in him anyway? He's a stuck-up prick with his head shoved so far up his own ass he can't see how fucking great his life is! Or was…"

Bakura went on like this for quite some time, grumbling under his breath and making his way downtown. He paid no heed to the strange looks he received from passers-by either. To him, they might as well have been mannequins. Thus Bakura quickly found himself lost in his own world. If he wasn't careful he could slip right into the shadow realm, and he _really_ didn't want to be there right now. He was liable to take one of those unsuspecting mannequins with him and _kill_ them if he ended up there…

Thoughts like those reminded him of Ryou, and thinking of Ryou inevitably made him wonder whether or not it was the best thing to cut him loose. They really _had_ hit it off, quite well in fact – better than he'd expected...like they fit together or something. The little twerp had actually distracted him from himself for a while, from his other tormented feelings… Ryou was the light to his own dark. The good to his evil. Hikari to yami.

But no; Ryou was also a cream puff – something disgustingly soft and fluffy – and Bakura _detested_ sweets. There would be no turning back now, even if he wanted to. Spending another week with someone harboring that much 'cute' would have given him a seizure.

And so he prodded on. However, being so lost in thought still wasn't enough to keep Bakura from noticing a painstakingly familiar hairstyle from the window of a dimly lit bar. There were several other people milling about inside the place, but for a Saturday night it wasn't so crowded that it was unbearable. And Bakura couldn't resist one last chance to burn every last bridge around him anyway, now that he'd fucked everything else up. He relished a challenge (another reason why breaking up with Ryou was for the better; there was simply no challenge to that one) and he nearly always rose up from the ashes of defeat like a phoenix – ever immortal in his quest to finally defeat Yami, once and for all. One more round couldn't possibly make things any worse…

But he was wrong. He would learn to drink those words, literally.

~;~

"Hey kid, don't you think you're a little too _young_ to be ordering a drink?" the bartender said gruffly, raising his brows skyward at the slim teen with the freaky colored hair who had just ordered his first round.

"Try five thousand years too young," Yami growled impatiently under his breath. To the bartender he replied, "What's it to you, so long as I tip you well?"

"Ah, nothin' really. Teens these days, I swear…Have a seat, junior."

Yami gave the man his darkest impression of a death glare, and upon meeting those eyes the bartender quickly hastened to finish fixing Yami's drink. Once made and safely slid toward his customer, the rude man pointedly decided to ignore Yami and any other requests he might have had. _Serves him right, though,_ Yami thought. He hadn't come here to make idle chatter; he'd come to be alone and to drink himself into forgetting about…that person he wasn't going to think about.

After he'd taken a long swig of the cheaply tasting brew, Yami let his eyes wander about the bar. There was an anguished looking man talking to the bartender now, whose coat had definitely seen better days. Yami would even go as far as to say he was homeless if he'd seen him on the street. As it stands, he was probably just an ordinary man.

"Sometimes I wish I were an ordinary man," Yami said to no one in particular. "Sometimes I miss home... I miss _him_…" He took another swig and looked toward the other side of the bar.

There he could see a multitude of different people, most of them talking to someone or another. Yami didn't feel like talking though, and was glad all of them seemed preoccupied. A woman dressed in a business suit was laughing with a younger looking man. They were both seated at a table for two, by the window that showed a nice view of the street where—

Yami's heart suddenly froze in his chest, and the third swig he'd almost taken was left floating in the mug, half raised to his lips. Of all the places, and all the people in Japan…

And now that person was—no. There was _no way_ he'd want to come into the bar, unless…unless…

Yami turned back around on the stool, too horrified to even begin worrying over whether or not Bakura had seen him. At this point it didn't matter, because he was fairly certain his arch nemesis _had_ already seen him.

"Hey," said a lowly pitched voice, rough like sand-paper on gravel, slightly accented with British from being bonded to Ryou for so long. Yami cringed inwardly and nearly lifted the mug again to chug the rest of it. "What the hell are you doing in here, _pharaoh_?" He could hear the sarcastic grin in that voice without even having to look. He could picture those red eyes dancing with mischief, searching Yami's own for a certain spark of defiance. Yami wasn't about to give that to him. Not yet anyway…

"What the hell does it look like I'm doing?" he said coldly.

"Looks like you're wallowing in self-pity to me. Care if I join you…?"

It didn't take long. Bakura's eyes widened slightly when Yami suddenly stood up, fast as lightning. "The fuck I care!" he yelled, face-to-face with Bakura now and defiant as ever, "I care about as much as I care about you, which is not at all – so why the hell not? Go ahead and _make my evening_ by gracing me with your _awesome_ presence, thief!"

The bartender's attention was now solely back on Yami, though not in the carefree manner he'd had earlier. He still seemed wary of speaking to him again, maybe more so now that Yami had attracted so much attention to himself, but in spite of that he didn't seem like the type that would hesitate to kick someone causing a ruckus out of his establishment. He had the muscles to do it himself, too. Bakura's endless cackling was infuriating.

Yami cursed under his breath and slammed his drink back down onto the bar table. "See what you made me do? You're such a good-for-nothing…good-for-nothing…"

Bakura barked a short laugh at Yami's failing attempt to insult him. Now that Yami could see him up close, he noticed that the other's eyes really _were_ sparkling with mischief. They were practically on fire. "Oh, _I_ made you say that? Lucky me, eh? I must be _especially_ important to you to cause such an outburst."

"_Shut up_!" Yami hissed, trying desperately not to yell again. "You mean nothing to me!" Was it so much to ask? He really just wanted to be left alone for once…

"How about this: I'll leave you alone for good if you play one last game with me."

"I thought you'd _already_ left me alone for good. You haven't spoken to me in weeks…"

"Seems like just yesterday I was bowing down at your bloody feet like all your other pathetic friends, though, doesn't it? I didn't think you'd have even noticed my absence with all the groveling you get."

"That's not what I meant at all," Yami said, feeling his voice shift gears from the heat of anger down to a simmering depression. When he tried to sound bold again, he only sounded pathetic from the effort, "I don't tell anyone to act like that…"

"No, but you _expect_ them to, don't you? I would know best of anyone what you expect of us, pharaoh. I've witnessed it first-hand more times than I can count."

"You said you'd leave me alone," Yami snapped, hopeful to change the subject. He still thought his own voice sounded like someone else's; tired, agitated, strained and miserable… Never in his life had he felt so utterly defeated. "What do you want?"

"I want to play a game with you, to end us once and for all. I'm not even entirely sure that I care what the outcome is because I've pretty much made up my mind already, but why not? I've got nothing to lose, and I can't resist a challenge."

"We're _already_ finished, Bakura. I took the hint, even if I didn't understand why until today…"

Bakura narrowed his eyes. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Don't act dumb with me. I know you're with Ryou now, so please… Spare me the gloating and just let me drink alone in peace."

"Who finally told you? I know you didn't figure it out on your own."

"Who do you think?"

Bakura tilted his head a bit to the side. "…and?"

Then it was Yami's turn to narrow his eyes. "And _what_?"

"Doesn't it bother you? I didn't even say why I left, and I ignored you when you tried to call me. Surely you felt something—"

"Of course I did!" Yami yelled, but he softened his voice at a glare from the bartender. "Of course it bothered me. Why do you think I kept trying to call you all those times, over and over, again and again?"

"Bah! And not once did you try to come see me in person!"

"I was going to!"

"Bullshit! If you were going to, then why didn't you?"

"Because I was scared, okay? I was afraid…to face to truth… I didn't want to hear you say we were over, because I guess, in my mind we weren't over – not as long as you hadn't said we were. And since you refused to talk to me, I thought that meant that you _wouldn't _say we were over…and that you might come back eventually…"

Bakura didn't say anything after that. Other than the muffled chatter of the other patrons in the bar, the air around the two boys was silent, and a bit awkward. Yami hated the feeling. He hated that Bakura was even there…

After leaving Gramps' place, he had been on his way to Ryou's apartment when Yugi's words finally got to him. He was merely a block away, when suddenly he'd turned around and ran the direction he'd just come from, tears threatening to form on his dark lashes from the realization. His hikari was right though. Bakura had every right to be happy. And if ignoring Yami was his way of saying he was unhappy, well… It wasn't the nicest way of putting things, but it did get the point across. In the end, Yami had decided that letting go was best for the both of them, and he'd ran the rest of the way to the bar so he could drink away his sadness, his jealousy, and his pain. In the end, he'd been the one to decide they were really over after all.

Bakura's expression was quite unreadable, but Yami wasn't even trying to pay attention to him. He didn't want to see those garnet eyes analyzing him, didn't want to see his angular face or his perfect jaw line, or his slightly sloped nose or his ever-fluffy hair cascading down his shoulders. He didn't want Bakura to be there at all because he just wanted to be left alone.

The spiky haired duelist was about to finish off the last half of his beer when Bakura said softly, "So do you want to have one final round or not?"

Yami sighed. "If that was a rhetorical question, then you can just leave. If it wasn't, my answer is no, not really. Please go away anyway."

"Good," Bakura said, his wicked half-grin tugging at the side of his mouth, "that's what I expected you to say." On that note, he took a seat on the stool next to Yami.

"What are you doing?" Yami asked. He tried not to sound interested even though he was. Bakura let his grin fully awaken now.

"I'm not going to leave you alone, since I clearly said I'd leave you alone only if you obliged to play a game with me. Since you declined, I might as well have a drink while I'm here, right? Hey! Bartender! Send another mug this way!"

Yami openly stared at his ex-lover. He stared at him like he'd just sprouted wings. Or horns, more accurately. But Bakura had not sprouted anything, and now he had a full mug of bubbling, yellow alcohol at his disposal because the bartender had just fulfilled his request.

"Bet I can finish this faster than you can finish yours," Bakura said in a casual tone.

Yami didn't understand how the thief could be so aloof about the whole situation. Personally, he was quite distraught, what with Bakura randomly showing up, suddenly speaking to him again, and then demanding a challenge to finally break them up for good out of nowhere. He refused to show any of the distress on his face, though. Instead, he fueled that distress into adrenaline, mostly to distract himself from how enticing Bakura looked when he grinned like that.

"Fine," Yami agreed darkly, "You're on."

~;~

**Who do you think can hold their booze better? ;) The final drabble is up next, full of the good stuff we've all been waiting for! Thanks for reading!  
>~;~Shaku<strong>


	3. A Race

**Drabble Challenge from rei-jikitsune21 to help me get over my writer's block:**

_Write any format (drabble, one-shot...pick your posion, lol) based on this "One thing wrapped around another", "Something soft and fluffy", or "A race"._

**WELCOME to what was supposed to be the third and final (now there's a word I don't use every day..haha) installment of my connecting three-shot story! Unfortunately, I hit writer's block on this one. The bad news is that there will now be four chapters. (I know you must be so disappointed…xD) The good news is that I got enough of this chapter finished so that I could post this as the first part. As you should know by now, each drabble contains a small story line based on each respective title from the challenge, but they all sort of connect relatively and chronologically. This particular drabble contains copious amounts of Darkshipping shonen-ai. (Why else are you here? Duh.) The next (and hopefully FINAL) drabble will contain even more. **

**SPECIAL THANKS to these reviewers: **_**rei-jikitsune21, Coolaloo, CandyassGoth, **_**and **_**shugo sora.**_** Your reviews fill my heart with happy, lemony gumdrops and your support gets you (somewhat?) frequent updates. ;) It's a mutual author-reviewer-love-thing, yeah? Yeah~**

**PLEASE keep in mind that these **_**are**_** drabbles, and as such they are practically un-revised, hardly plot-driven, and come into being spontaneously from the inner-workings of my mind (and as a result, they may not be very good, at least compared to my other works anyway…) In spite of all that, I hope you enjoy the randomness regardless. I sure as hell enjoy writing it~!**

~;~

**Tangled**

**Part 3:****  
><strong>_**A Race**_

~;~

"Bakura, what are you doing?" Yami asked as Bakura started drinking well before any rules had been established. The thief merely glanced at him surreptitiously through one half-opened eye while he chugged, not bothering to answer until he was finished.

"I'm catching up, what's it look like?" he growled back, lips lilting into an almost-smirk.

"It looked to me like you were cheating…" Yami said, trying (and failing) to hide his own smile. The other customers and bar goers soon started to fade away as his attention focused more and more on his white-haired ex. And as usual, Bakura simply did things his way, drinking until his mug was also depleted to same amount Yami had left, which was about half, give or take.

"All right then," Bakura said, "Stipulations. We get that fat fool over there to have plenty of beer at his disposal, ready to replenish ours should we need to do so – and I already know we will, so there's that. Nextly, we need to establish what I meant again."

Yami rolled his eyes skyward. "Do we now?"

"Yes. We do. Because if I win, this is the end of what we were. Or are. Or whatever. I want it to end. What do you want if you win?"

Yami hesitated. For one thing, he didn't think he could win a drinking contest against Bakura, so deciding his own winning terms was kind of pointless. For another, what he wanted was the exact opposite of what Bakura wanted. Yami wanted to keep what they had together, for them to go _exactly _back to the way they were – which didn't do him any good, because he also wanted Bakura to be happy…

He didn't tell Bakura this, of course. So instead, he simply stated, "The same thing you do…"

Now it was Bakura's turn to hesitate. Yami caught a tell-tale glint of confusion in the other's eyes, but it so brief that it could have just been the alcohol… A second later, the thief was shrugging and hollering for the bartender to have two more mugs at-the-ready.

"Those terms don't make much for a match you know…" Bakura said softly. "If the outcome is the same, why participate at all?"

Yami shrugged. "You said it was for old time's sake and also to piss me off. Why not? If I win, it'll piss _you _off, and that's well worth whatever the risk is at this point." Yami raised his glass, loving the way Bakura looked when he smiled – so deliciously dark… Dark eyes, dark grin, dark demeanor… Sitting next to someone like that made the dark in Yami's own soul nearly indistinguishable. He was a saint compared to the other, and yet… There was a slight something about him that complimented Yami. He knew it, and he wanted it… He wanted him back so bad he couldn't stand it…

Bakura raised his glass too as the bartender made his way over there, grumbling all the while. Neither Yami nor Bakura noticed.

"A race, to see who can drink the most the longest!" Bakura said loudly. Several other people at the bar turned their heads, and a few of the drunker ones actually stumbled over to watch.

"A race," Yami said as well. He couldn't hide the slightly sad tone in his voice.

Together, they clinked their glasses in a toast and quickly began to drink what was left in both of their mugs.

At first, it was impossible to tell who would be the victor in the contest. Neither Yami nor Bakura were very drunk to begin with, and both of them were of a similar build… They finished off their first half-glass at the exact same time and started on their next mug the bartender had fixed instantaneously.

Halfway through that one Yami started to slow a bit… His heart wasn't in this game, and knowing it might be the last time he spoke to Bakura in a very long time made his concentration wane. He could see a bubbly, yellow version of the thief through his beer, chugging away just as hard as he could. _So he really does want it to end, huh? _Yami thought soberly. _Or maybe he just wants to win… He was always as competitive as I was about these games we played…_

With a slight shake of his head, Yami set down his mug. A sigh of annoyance went through the small crowd as people who had been hoping for a real match threw up their hands and grumbled. Bakura himself took two more gulps before he too set his mug onto the bar top with a now openly confused look on his face.

"What gives? I thought you—"

Yami didn't let him finish. "You won, Bakura. It's over… I think I'm gonna go back now, back to where we were before we ever…you know. Just like you wanted. So…good-bye I guess."

Bakura tried to say something afterwards, but Yami was already walking out, and then he was running – running out of the bar; running down the street; running anywhere he could save for wherever Bakura was.

It was really over, for good…

Yami didn't feel when the rain started to pelt his face. He didn't hear the thunder that boomed overhead. He didn't see where he was running to, just so long as he was running away from what he couldn't have.

And all of a sudden, he wanted it to be over, too.

~;~

"Oh, you _ingrate_!" Bakura yelled as he sprinted forward towards Yami's shadowed figure. They'd been running for a while now, him chasing that spiky-haired idiot all over town and eventually to the fish market. It seemed like no matter how loud he yelled, Bakura couldn't get his attention…

And he was beyond panting and out of breath by now, pushing himself to his very limit to make it to the Pharaoh. They dodged each other through all of the empty stalls, the night time stars shadowed over by thick clouds and street lights. Yami led the chase by at least 20 feet. Bakura was about to give up when he suddenly gauged Yami's next direction…

"No…" he whispered. He couldn't hear it beneath the torrential rain. "No! This is not what I meant and you know it! _You know it!_ Not race to your death, you idiot! Race to the end my ass! I meant to go back where we were…before… when we were together, not apart! _Idiot!_" Now he felt more like he was talking to himself; he knew Yami couldn't hear him in the storm. Bakura was the real idiot here. He hadn't meant _this_…

Lightning flashed and lit up the world for a split second, illuminating his heart-broken friend running down the pier. It was all Bakura could do to keep from screaming as he watch his friend's feet lift from the ocean worn wood as he jumped at a run straight off the edge. Bakura thought he could make it in time. If he could just make his legs move a bit faster…

When the lightning flashed again, Yami was gone.

The thief skidded to a halt at the end of the pier seconds too late, clothing soaked to the bone, hair whipping about his face in the heavy winds of the hurricane. Seconds. He didn't have minutes. Everything was happening too fast, but in seconds he had made his decision; he jumped too.

Having lived in the desert most of his life, Bakura was not among the best of swimmers. Casually taking a dip in the Nile was not exactly akin to performing an impromptu rescue in the ocean during the middle of a thrashing storm. None of that stopped him from trying though, and the icy ocean waves swallowed him whole without complaint. Darkness enveloped. Darkness, and cold...

But that was more like it, actually. Cold and dark he was used to (that came with having been an _evil _thief during his best years). Being surrounded by water made him feel numb to his core, which was a lot like how it felt to be infused with shadow magic. Now if he could just find a way to _see_…

When the lightning flashed again, he thought he saw a pale face staring lifelessly back at him through the murk. That didn't stop him from reaching out.


End file.
